


All the Things I Cannot Give You

by George_Sand_II



Category: Kaptein Sabeltann | Captain Sabertooth - Formoe
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Fluff, Just two stupid pirates denying their feelings because they have zero communications skills, M/M, Pining, Pirates, Romance, Sabertooth is ace, Though he won't admit to it the pale bastard, Treasure of Lama Rama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:00:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27844870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/George_Sand_II/pseuds/George_Sand_II
Summary: Sabertooth thinks he can see his first-mate falling in love. Longfinger doesn't think his captain returns his feelings. Rosa and Longfinger are trying to raise Pinky in the strangest co-op known to man, and Sabertooth manages to convince himself that it would be best if the man he loves could be happy with someone else. After all, she can give Longfinger so much that he himself will never be able to...Runs concurrent with the movie Treasure of Lama Rama because the shoehorned-in subplot with the Longfinger/Rosa romance was strained, awkward and uncalled for. So here is what really went on behind the scenes.
Relationships: Kaptein Sabeltann/Langemann
Comments: 10
Kudos: 4





	1. What If You Fell In Love

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I'm Danish, I do speak and write Norwegian, and as such listen to all the songs, watch the films (and the plays, when I get the chance to go to Kristiansand and see them) in their original and proper language. However, I have seen a surge of English-language fics of a Seriously Doubtful nature make their way into this fandom and I do not like the way they represent it. In fact, I don't think they represent it at all. As such, I will write all my fics for this fandom in English, so any non-Nordic readers will have something to read besides all that......... whatever it's supposed to be.
> 
> Enjoy!

A subtle movement, almost as if the ship gave a little start, without so much as unsteadying the experienced crew, as the mooring lines tightened and finally stopped her movement. There was a crowd at the docks, already filling up the whole space and cheering, an infernal noise that brought him as much unrest as it brough him glee. Sabertooth’s grip on the railing tightened, as the gangplank was manoeuvred into place.

“You’re their king, cap’n. Go and greet your people.” Whispered a soft voice just by his ear.

No need to turn. He knew already what Longfinger’s expression would do to him, how the warm gleam in his eyes would calm him, and the upward curl at the corner of his lips soothe his soul like a rare and fragrant balm. It would be better if he did not allow himself such liberties.

Aware that he also could not allow for any suspicion of withholding between them, he briefly glanced in his first mate’s direction, though keeping his eyes fixed at a point a few inches above his head, and gave a noncommittal, but not displeased, purr.

Then he crossed the gangplank, waving at the people whom his conquests fed and clothed. A few very small ones had been added since he left, and he welcomed the challenge of plundering even more gold and precious gems to ensure that there was just enough for them, too. His smiles were distant, but real. And then it happened…

Longfinger’s presence vanished from his side, he knew it before he could ever really have sensed it by any ordinary means. He stiffened, and risked a brief glance.

It was that lady smith, the commander of the town’s defences, Rosa. Longfinger was talking to her, or rather, he was bumbling around which was nothing like his usual suave ways with women. The man even seemed to stutter a little. Sabertooth allowed it to continue a while longer than he should have, and a lot of whiles longer than he liked. When he was on the very verge of collapsing inwards, he growled.

“Longfinger!”

One. Two –

“Aye, cap’n!”

Three, four, five…

He was here. Sabertooth breathed. And continued, without even looking back, feeling a mixture of elation and guilt as he sensed Longfinger follow right behind him. He needed the presence to do what he always did, tell the riveting tale of their venture to the eagerly awaiting crowds.

Halfway there, walking at a leisurely pace, and deliberately taking the scenic route so as to secure a moment of shared solitude, Sabertooth finally looked at his first mate.

“So, Miss Rosa…”

Longfinger swallowed. “What is it about Miss Rosa?”

“You two seem very…” Sabertooth shrugged. “Familial.” 

It was not entirely the right word, but then he preferred to act like he didn’t know the right word. Besotted. In love. Or at the very least awfully awkward in a squishy sort of way which didn’t agree with the captain at all, but he had his own reasons for suppressing that disagreeableness.

“Pinky lives with her, you know that. She raises him, sort of, and I do too, sort of, so we’re raising him together…”

“Sort of?”

“Yes. Well, I mean... yes.”

Sabertooth suppressed a sigh. They had no more time as they reached the entryway on to the swing-bridge which served as his platform for official speeches. Which was as well, because it meant Longfinger never got a chance to address the tension he sensed in his captain.

Usually, after a speech, Sabertooth would’ve told Longfinger to go with the crew, make sure they were taken care of by whatever means they desired, and could feast and drink and-other-things their hearts out, and sleep away the better part of tomorrow safe and sound. With no world to worry about.

Not today.

Today, that bastard Bjorn decided to steal his ship and ruin his entire damn day, and he even had three blind passengers. How much more god-awful could this week bloody well get?


	2. What If You Could Hate Me

A strong breeze filled the sails and made them bulge, propelling the skullclad ship forward, a quiet business filled the deck as the crew made their bid to gain the most from this favourable wind, and in his cabin, captain Sabertooth paced angrily.

Stowaways! On his ship! Or, rather, on his temporarily-commandeered-ship-and-by-extension-his-ship now that he had regained the Black Lady by sheer force of stubbornness and suavity. Still, he fumed. He had spent the better part of ten minutes carefully washing away the top layer from all his cosmetics, just in case that worthless scoundrel Bjorn had touched them. Then, he had counted every bit of gold he had in his chest under the bed, although there wasn’t much to count. Everything was cleansed of foreign influence, and everything was in its place, including the fabled map to Lama Rama, which lay splayed out on his desk, pinned to the wooden table by each corner.

Sabertooth slapped the table with both hands and grasped the edges until his knuckles went even whiter than they already were. He leaned heavily against it, his back and shoulders slumping. Why, oh, why could things never simply go his way?

“That was not a very nice thing you just did.”

Unsurprised at his first-mate’s sudden and noiseless appearance, Sabertooth sighed unmovedly. There was no need to answer. Or, rather, there was if he wanted to silence Longfinger, which he knew he could, but that would only leave the man with all his grievances unspoken and prolong the issue for a later date where it might explode in a quiet moment. Better to have it out now.

“Saving the ship was Pinky’s doing and you know it, the lad risked life and limb – Bjorn had him on the plank for pity’s sake!” continued Longfinger, now advancing across the room towards his motionless captain. “He deserves acknowledgement, even if you will not give him praise. You have devastated him!”

Sabertooth growled at this, a sort of exasperated yet noncommittal growl. “The boy will recover, he’s young and stubborn and it was only a little blow.”

“Only a little blow?” Longfinger scoffed. “You’re his hero, any blow from you can be nothing other than major. Besides, do you care nothing about what I think of you?”

Perhaps, Sabertooth mused, I care too much. After all, if you could hate me just a little, detest me only ever so slightly, perhaps you wouldn’t care so much…

He did not notice Longfinger cross the subtle border into his personal space, it was all too natural for him to do so. A subtle touch to his arm caused him to startle and jerk away, and the worried look he caught on his first-mate’s face made him immediately regret his reaction.

“Why do you do this?” asked Longfinger with that quiet voice which had an effect on Sabertooth that he would never admit to.

“Do what.” The captain asked, stubbornly refusing to understand.

Before Longfinger could say something so perfectly aimed that he would be unable to defend himself against it, Sabertooth straightened up and turned towards the window, giving his first-mate a view of only his back. No chance for him to see the fleeting expression of pain on the whitened face.

“Go and collect our strays. Miss Rosa, particularly. I have a plan.”

He heard Longfinger sigh. Noted idly the hesitation in his steps, the way he could hear him turn to look back more than once. Then, as the door closed between them, offering a modicum of isolationist safety, Sabertooth’s squared shoulders sagged. He could not count the number of years where he had kept up this façade effortlessly. In fact, it was hardly a façade at all. He was truly like this; it was simply an unfortunate fact that he was also more than this. There was no trouble in keeping the rest of the crew at bay, in fact they seemed quite insistent on keeping their own distance from their captain, so there was no need for him to make any effort at creating it himself.

Longfinger, however…

The man had had that insistent manner of coming closer than the others ever since they met, in fact that was largely why Sabertooth had made him first-mate. He could read his captain’s moods as well as he read the crew’s, and he knew how to make them harmonise. Sabertooth had become comfortable, and slowly his guard had come down around the man.

Now, he paid the price. 

Behind that guard he had so deftly lowered, Longfinger had struck weaknesses that Sabertooth preferred to keep shielded. He sighed. Longfinger seemed intent to come closer, and closer, until they were separated only by the final, quavering defences of Sabertooth’s heart and mind, and worse; there was this horrible, alluring, wonderful urge to give in.

Hearing footsteps in the woody distance, and voices arguing, he gave a short chuckle. It was a dark sound, barely perceptible above the creaking of wood and singing of waves. The irony had struck him.

Here he was, a man trying to cut away his own shadow.


	3. What If It Was Never Truly Love

Small though it was, the dinghy held the most precious thing that Sabertooth had ever known. And he was sailing away without him, that lady smith Rosa sitting beside him as the two bickered an argument that the wind swept away before the captain could hear so much of a murmur of it. They always seemed to bicker, in this strangely mellow way as though they both knew the disagreement would cause no major disruption in their dealings with each other. Sabertooth and Longfinger had never bickered like that… but then, their relationship was strictly professional, wasn’t it? So perhaps this was simply something, people did when they were in love.

And if it was, perhaps what he felt was not, as it were, love?

He’d never given it much thought until recently. When Sabertooth had realised that he must find a way to save Longfinger from becoming a constant counterweight to as malevolent a temper as the one his captain possessed, even if that meant pushing him into the arms of someone else. Sabertooth cared for no one in the world, trusted no one… save for Longfinger. It was too great a burden for any man to bear, the pale man mused as he watched the dinghy make it to the shore, and he would not allow this burden to weigh Longfinger down.

A minor scuffle happened on shore, during which Sabertooth stayed wisely out of sight. For their ruse to be successful, he had to remain an unknown factor. Besides, Longfinger was more than capable. The captain barely even twitched, when he glanced above the rail to see the glint of a sabre that wasn’t Longfinger’s.

Pinky appeared. Where on earth had he come from? Pinky, Miss Rosa, and Longfinger. It struck him that they looked rather like a family…

Then they were allowed in, and Sabertooth could only watch as the heavy gates closed behind them. He settled down to wait out the rest of the day in his cabin.  
Everything was quiet, even his mind. He had settled with the idea, and the ice-cold clarity of pragmatism now took over. There were two goals: The King’s Pearl, and… the other goal. Now his thoughts bent to the task of achieving them, and there was only the glorious expectation of the Chase.

As the darkness settled, noise and light began to seep from the huge fortress and the city and palace behind it. A party, how very quaint. Sabertooth’s lips curled into a cruel smile. Partying meant drunk people, benevolent chaos and a very quiet morning. All of these were things he could use to his advantage, especially if Longfinger managed to stick to the plan which, considering that boy Pinky had snuck aboard the dinghy and come along, was unlikely to happen.

Night fell, stumbling over a few stubborn rays of sun that refused to leave the sky.

Sabertooth rose and readied himself for fighting and for treasure, and possibly for the greatest loss of his entire life, if he had his way.

They snuck ashore, and when the gates opened there was Longfinger, apologising for the wait. His eyes were steady, did not drift even as Miss Rosa appeared beside him, being every bit a beautiful woman. Had he been in any other state than white-cold focus, Sabertooth might have noticed. As it were, he stored it away for later pondering. 

As it turned out, there was no chance for pondering any time soon. Pesky Bjorn, and that pesky, pesky prince Badal only had to go and wreck a perfectly good heist.


	4. And If I Do Love You, What Then

There was no quiet like the quiet of a prison cell with more than one inhabitant. Nobody wanted to talk to one another, because the only conversations one could have in such a place were ones that should not be overheard by those whom they didn’t concern.

Sabertooth felt quite the same way, he suspected, as all the others. He stood by the barred window and looked out at the pale morning, waiting and daring the world to throw some chance occurrence at him that could jump-start the jumbled mess of his mind and make some plan jump into his head that was just crazy enough to get them out of here. So far, nothing had come, and his mind was as jumbled as ever.

To the uninitiated, he looked like he was plotting. This was an advantage, since it kept his crew from losing heart and, perhaps more importantly, kept up their spirits. He did not doubt for one instant that they truly and whole-heartedly believed that he would get them out. 

He himself was less certain, but never one to let his doubts show.

At his shoulder, Longfinger peered out over the bay, having made his way there as quietly as ever the very moment they’d been locked in here, and never left his place. Rosa sat in a corner, abandoned and dozing against the cold chalked wall. Sabertooth wondered about this, about why Longfinger had not chosen to stay with her. Gentleman as he was, he had given her his coat when Sabertooth had nudged him, but had just as quickly returned to his captain’s side, not lingering for a moment longer than he had to.

Why?

Even now when he should be wringing his brain for plausible and, possibly more likely, implausible escape plans, this was what he wondered upon. Until, as suddenly as lightning from a clear sky, a warm, coarse hand brushed his, and he could not help the way his own pale fingers twitched with eagerness to further the touch.   
Longfinger noticed. Very subtly, and invisibly to all the rest, he snuck his hand into Sabertooth’s without looking at him.

Sabertooth stopped breathing. He only remembered to when Longfinger caught his gaze and looked at him with such tender concern that it made him release all the air in his lungs in one, age-long sigh. Without the need for words, they understood all that they could want to say.

They’d never actually been in a worse pickle than this one, completely at the mercy of someone else, someone who was unlikely to be tricked, and just as unlikely to show mercy at times that could be cleverly exploited. Sabertooth’s mind reasoned with his principles. If they were going to die, there was no real reason not to let Longfinger peer beyond the last defence, was there? No real reason not to let him see. To tell him. To be honest, here at the end of all things.

All it took was one look. The words would not be spoken, but lodged themselves in Sabertooth’s throat, so he merely looked Longfinger in the eyes and let the final wall crumble and fall.

Longfinger’s hand squeezed his own tightly, as the gentle eyes turned into a swirling warmth of longing and questions. They were questions that Sabertooth could not answer, and perhaps was loath to, now that they were wordlessly asked. 

A flash of white canvas on the sea outside distracted them.

“Cap’n, look!” breathed Longfinger, gazing with astonishment at the Black Lady who was suddenly sailing, proud as ever, in the bay below them. Someone had raised canvas, and even bared the skull on her transom.

Quick as a viper, Sabertooth snatched an empty bottle from the floor and smashed it, using the bottom and a shard of broken glass for a spyglass. He caught the angle just in time to see the muzzle flash of a cannon, and a singular thought took control of his mind.

He threw himself sideways and knocked Longfinger to the floor, just out of reach of the cannonball which shattered through the outer wall a moment later, shielding him bodily from debris. Dusty and unshaken, he looked up, that smile back in place on his lips.

Well, well, he thought, this will do.


	5. What If I Was Wrong

Images kept coursing through an already exhausted mind as Sabertooth sat sleepless in his cabin. Already he had quit his bed, finding that if he was going to be wrecked by insomnia then it might as well be in a less vulnerable state, and he had dressed and groomed and sat himself in his chair, framed by moonlight streaming in through the large window-eyes of the Black Lady’s great skull. Inside his brain, he saw again and again the images of Longfinger and Rosa, fighting side by side, bickering, and finally sharing a hasty kiss in the heat of battle.

He had wished for this to happen, and now that it had, he wished it away. Wished, in some ways, himself away. Perhaps felt that if he could have urged himself down another part when he chose to strip away all that he had been to rebuild himself anew, he would have done so.

No matter, he reminded himself, it was already done, and it was for the best. No man belonged in a life as another man’s counterweight, and no one deserved to exist merely as someone else’s shadow. Most particularly not a man with so great a personality, and indeed such a range and volume of skills as Longfinger. It was better like this. To see him drift away would be a painful experience, but Longfinger would thrive at last when he was no longer chained to Sabertooth’s footsteps.

Quietly, his door opened. Just as quietly, it was closed, and gentle steps sounded in the shadows, audible only because the sea was utterly still, and the ship becalmed. Sabertooth debated internally with himself for a moment whether to pretend that he had fallen asleep. His face, he knew, was bathed in shadows, and if he closed his eyes now, then perhaps even Longfinger would be convinced.

“What is it that haunts you?” asked the first-mate’s soft voice. Longfinger had come soundlessly close in the split second that Sabertooth had not been vigilant.

“Nothing.” Answered the white-faced man with a sneer of denial. “My ship is whole, my crew is complete, and the greatest treasure is safely in my store. What ever could haunt me now?”

Stepping into his personal sphere, which was a lot more sensitive when he was strained like this, Longfinger seemed unmoved by the coarseness of the reply. “Something must be; you are out of balance, cap’n.”

For some reason, when Longfinger sat himself on the edge of the table, mere inches away from Sabertooth, that was the last drop. The captain stood up with such a force that he nearly overturned his chair. Trying and failing to control his anger, which he had never been particularly good at, he marched over to the window and stared out of it.

Longfinger followed him. Then, there was a large hand at the small of his back.

Abruptly, Sabertooth turned and pushed the offending hand away with more force than was called for. “Why are you here, Longfinger? Don’t you have a lady friend to consider?” The words came out with more anger, more acid than Sabertooth intended, and the moment Longfinger tilted his head just-so, and pressed his lips together in that particular expression, he knew he had given himself away.

“So it is me. I thought it might be.” There was anger now, too, in Longfinger’s voice, but it was not the wild, flaming rage that Sabertooth himself was prone to. This anger was indignant, strained and somehow sorrowful. “For once, I do not understand. So long you kept me at bay, then suddenly you give me everything and nothing, and just as suddenly shut me out again. What is it that you want?”

The answer fell onto Sabertooth’s tongue before he could even think about it. “Your freedom.” He said, meaning every word of it. This was what he was doing, he was certain. He was setting Longfinger free.

“Did you ever stop to consider that this is my freedom?” asked Longfinger with that quiet, indignant fury. “Or to think upon what I prefer? I have stayed with you all these years because I chose to, and it offends me that you would think I would ever let myself be caught up in anything less than I wanted.” Longfinger did not roar. His voice softened with every word until it was barely a whisper, and it tore at Sabertooth in ways he had not been torn at for untold years. Perhaps never before.

A voice of reason. Longfinger had always provided this in difficult situations, when Sabertooth was on the verge of crossing a crucial line with the crew, or in the rare cases where he was leaning towards making a poor decision. Was this one of those cases? Sabertooth did not like to think so, with how long he had spent planning and plotting, and how much harm he had done to himself in the process. He liked to think he new better. An illusion that, sometimes, it was best to shatter, and to which Longfinger rarely hesitated to raise a hammer.

In the absence of an answer, Longfinger began to turn from angry to exasperated. “Why were you so desperate to be rid of me? I know you planned it, and you must have been planning it a while, knowing you. Why? Am I really of so little use to you?”

Sabertooth blinked, his face setting into an expression like a freshly-slapped man. “Did you think that was why I did this? You are the single best man I have, my closest accomplice. I trust you with the magic diamond.” He hesitated, but the words were already escaping his mind, and they fled onto his tongue before he could stop them. “I trust you more than I trust myself.”

“Then trust me with this, too, and tell me truthfully why you did this.” Longfinger’s voice was soft, the kind of soft that slipped into Sabertooth’s self-imposed rigidity and made it buckle and fall apart.

He closed his eyes. This he could not say while locked by Longfinger’s gaze.

“I cannot give you all that you deserve. All that I know you need.”

“Then you know very little of my needs, if you think so.” Answered Longfinger. There was no answer from Sabertooth, only the slightest of gasps when those warm, wonderful hands cupped both sides of his face.

For a moment he was still and tense, as Longfinger closed in, but then the gentle press of their foreheads meeting made him realise abruptly that what he had dreaded would not be imposed upon him.

Longfinger chuckled when Sabertooth leaned into the touch, removing his hat to facilitate it, and idly noting that Longfinger wasn’t wearing his in the first place. “I know you better than to do that, cap’n.”

"And what of Miss Rosa?"

A puff of air touched Sabertooth's chin as Longfinger sighed. "She will be fine. Before all else, she is a friend, she will be understanding." Seemingly deeming the subject closed, he then proceeded to gently nudge the tip of his nose against his captain's. "How could you ever think that you would not be enough? I want nothing more than your trust, and perhaps, if I may be permitted as much liberty, your love."

“Well, just, perhaps…” purred Sabertooth, though lacking his usual surety. “You might be permitted a tad more liberty.” His breath was picking up, and he felt quite inclined towards going a little further. “Just none of the, ah, the –“

“Understood.” Whispered Longfinger, and leaned in slowly, leaving ample time for Sabertooth to withdraw his consent, should he wish to.

He did not wish to. And the kiss was as gentle, as careful, soft and chaste as Sabertooth could ever wish, but had never dared to believe it could be.


End file.
